An Apocalypse Goes Off Script, Cordless Chainsaw Wizardry, Winter Musings & Bob The Emotional Support Rooster
It has been raining here for much of the day and looking like it might just keep doing it which has me cooped up indoors with not much to do. So, I decided to take some time to do some writing and see what emerges. The weather has been mostly shit for the last few weeks now as it alternates between bouts of heavy rain, gusting winds and chilly temperatures but by and large I have stayed rather warm and comfortable so that is nice.
With all the precipitation the dog yard has managed to stay rather mud free which is more a result of the soils loamy nature than any effort on my part aside from doing my best not to disturb the ground overly much via digging or otherwise breaking up the topsoil. Surprisingly even the areas that I did do a good bit of digging in (like where the gates are) have held up well under the deluge and even all my own (and the dogs) foot traffic has yet to churn the walkways into a mucky mess.
Although I have failed to get back into the habit of writing and posting each day, I have been doing some stuff outdoors during the infrequent breaks in the foul weather. As far as the time that I have been spending cooped up indoors goes... I have mainly just tried to spend that time being thoughtful and reflective about the last four years of my life as well as doing my best to wrap my head around the current scenario in this country and the larger world. Let me just say that it all amounts to a daunting endeavor and an equally daunting scenario and although some aspects of it all are rather worrisome (and some aspects downright terrifying) I am not inclined to getting swept along by the current trajectory of 'doom and gloom' that many folks seem to be engaging in. Do not get me wrong there is some scary shit happening... and yet I am under no obligation to actually be scared and reserve the right not to be swayed otherwise.
To clarify that last bit some I should explain what I have been up to the last few months and how I have come to the point that I am with things as of today. Two months ago I began a small experiment of doing a sort of 'deep dive' into the current online culture and sort of catching up on a bunch of things that I have missed over the last several years due to perpetually being in situations where I had very limited bandwidth as far as an internet data connection goes. Since many of the platforms for streaming media were unavailable and there is lots of video content available to paint a broad cultural picture with... there was a lot I missed the last few years. So I did what any good explorer would do and let down my mental firewall and dove the fuck in to see what I could see along the way and in turn have had the opportunity to witness firsthand the algorithmic mass manipulation at play. Whoa! It was an interesting ride to say the least but what I found was that it is just a never ending wave of information that never actually breaks onto the surf and instead just continues a steady crest without abatement.
I am of course over simplifying things there but what I am saying is that having algorithms serve up my information instead of my own curiosity and observatory powers is akin to surfing a wave that never breaks, that wholly lacks destination, that has its own algorithmic agenda and can be surfed infinitely whilst never actually getting anywhere truly useful... and is at the end of the day just exhausting and under-fulfilling. I am well accustomed to binging on various forms of media but I had never in adulthood gone down the spoonfed route like I did recently. Obviously given that I have written only a few times in the last few months while doing said experiment I can safely say that it strongly inhibited my inclination to write and it also inhibited me from desiring to take pictures or create any other type of content. I have taken some pictures though and made a few new mixtape tracks but overall I have had very little desire to invest time in such things.
Going from spending three to four hours a day writing and posting to zero hours per day sure has freed up a large portion of my day and with that extra time I have mainly just relaxed, slept and dreamed so that has been not only good but also good for me. It has been nothing like my usual winter downtime but here I am at the ass end of the winter on my last of nine propane tanks and everything is just fine. My ninety day adjustment period has now run its course also and I have settled into my daily routines without too much aggravation along the way of getting them established. As far as projects go I have a handful of ongoing ones and some like the chicken coop and cabin building that I really need to focus on and get done as soon as I get the materials sorted for them.
At the moment the 'ongoing projects' amount to establishing some Kentucky-31 grass in and around the dog yard, trimming back vegetation from the roads, felling standing dead trees, de-barking oak and cherry poles, making low-grade biochar, building up the compost mound and figuring out a solid solar power setup for the place so that we can start mining crypto with it. As far as that last bit goes the new solar panels are now here and I have located an optimal site to install them at once we get to that phase of things after we get the rest of the components for the system. Once the solar powered mining rig is up and running I will share detailed information regarding what gear we use and all the parts involved. My biggest concern of course is having an adequate structure to house all the gear in and keeping not just the gear cool but also the mining rig cool in the southern climate. Honestly, being out of the mountains is nice and all but I am going to miss not having to provide a bunch of supplemental cooling capabilities to my gear.
On a different note, that new sixty volt electric chainsaw with that twelve amp hour battery is frigging awesome now that I got a new bar and chain for it. I actually have two bars and chains for it now and one is the standard manufacturer replacement and the other bar and chain is one with a slightly wider rail that can accommodate a wider variety of chain types. Basically I can now use a full-chisel (aggressive) chain on the electric chainsaw whereas with the manufacturer's bar I could not due to a lack of chains available for it. It makes for a hell of a nice upgrade and I have been putting the saw to good use felling and sectioning down a bunch of dead pine trees around the property. I even felled the big dead pine that was looming near my tent and I gotta say the day that I did that I slept better than I had my whole stay here because even when I was camped at the old base camp site I had dead pine trees looming over my sleeping area. To give you an idea of how sketchy that is I had even rehearsed diving under my writing table just in case I ever heard any of the trees falling! That slim 'maybe' of being able to make it under the table in time gave me just enough peace of mind to sleep but deep down I knew that my odds were not all that favorable if one of those trees were to topple and especially so if I was already asleep.
When I felled the pine near the new site it got hung up in the trees which I knew would happen because the only place that it could fall and not get hung up was on the tent. I was a little worried that the cordless chainsaw would not do well making the long diagonal cuts it would take to get the tree un-hung but it did rather well aside from when the battery got too hot and auto disconnected its power output. I had no idea that there was a heat sensor in them but it is a pretty cool feature. To finish the job of getting the tree un-hung and bucked I used the nine amp hour battery and let the twelve amp hour one cool down. It is worth noting that I was putting the saw under pretty heavy load which is why the battery got hot and under usual cutting circumstances it never happened.
It is also worth noting that between the two batteries I was able to do a heck of a lot of cuts and never depleted either battery below one third of its capacity. I did not count the number of cuts that I did but I would estimate that on that particular day I did around sixty to eighty cuts with about half of those cuts being small to medium sized branches and the rest being six to eight inch diameter yellow pine. All told that chainsaw is nice and quite scary to operate given how much cutting power it has compared to how little noise it makes. Having operated equipment and tools most of my life I am accustomed to them being noisy and the more powerful they cut the noisier that they are so this whole 'quiet' thing really stands out to me when I am operating the saw. Suffice it to say that it makes me be an extremely cautious operator!
Anyway, the days go by here and I am still plugging along doing what I can to improve my quality of life and stay focused on the larger task of the property itself. Given that winter is coming to a close I have a lot of brush clearing and general site cleanup to do before the warm weather and the snakes return. Overall I want to accomplish getting at least two or three good private camping sites developed in the wooded portions of the eastern slope and also give a lot of attention to all the other camping sites that are already established here which is pretty easy because they just need minor attention with a rake and the usual pruning of vegetation.
I also want to finish what I have begun on getting the roads and trails more manicured but that is always a gradual and never ending process. For now there are only a few spots along the roads where I need to trim up the canopy but otherwise I have it all in much better shape for both vehicular and foot traffic than it previously was. There is still a good bit of thorny stuff growing along the edges of things but just this past week I finally started to get a good handle on it and an idea of just how much routine maintenance that I am in for in that regard. I am sure that as things start growing back again over the coming months that I will have my hands full with 'landscaping' work so anything that I can do now I just have to do to lighten that load which is easy enough to do because I am cutting everything back before it can really start growing in for the year.
It is still raining here so I guess that I will keep pecking out a few more words. My birds have not been doing so well in the new scenario which makes me a bit sad. Mainly my two roosters got to adulthood and began fighting which causes all kinds of ruckus and at this point I have been keeping Bob separate from the others even though his brother Bob Backwards has turned out to be the much more aggressive one when it comes down to it. Bob himself has attacked me several times but finally quit doing it once I separated him from the rest of the chickens and gave him a few prolonged sessions of just holding him in my hands. My plan is to build a chicken coop that is separated into two pens and keep one rooster and hen in each side and thus evenly dividing the small flock. Hopefully once I do that they will all chill out some and get to looking healthier and not so stressed. I really want to get them more comfortable soon so that I will have more eggs and perhaps even see some of those eggs turn into chicks. It is also worth noting that the area that I have them fenced in is looking very scratched up now and will be super easy to get grass growing in once I move the chickens to their next location in the dog yard.
There is such a story to be told of the times that I find myself living in and if I could but word it down in some way that can help make it make more sense to me then I assuredly would. Instead I find myself in a sort of awe of the moment and completely flabbergasted as to what the hell to say about it all unfolding in realtime before me. It is like a slow motion movie based off an ill interpreted version of a novel whose utter essence is lost in the translation. It is like even the apocalypse has gone off-script and wandered into some surreal realm of self-examination and a sort of befuddled floundering as governments fail, as economies fail, as the institutions of normalcy are unveiled as fallacies and everything just sort of goes fucking sideways from there... and yet us humans by and large keep rising to the occasion of being decent human beings via everyday acts of kindness and love. One thing is for certain to me and that is that the 'surface area' of compassion for our fellow humans has expanded under the immense pressures that folks have been facing and for that I am thankful because anything else would be tragic beyond measure. Mayhaps I am foolish in that sentiment and even knowing that I am still fine with it because why the hell not given the alternatives and how shoddy they are.
Ultimately, I am also very biased and see the world (and experience it) the same that I have for many years and have been largely unaffected by the current scenario and with that I have been able to hang on to a consistent perspective throughout the upheaval and only made some minor tweaks to my lifestyle where necessary. That is not to say that things have been easy on me and I know that the weight of the moment is one shared by many and that together humanity will collectively keep putting one step in front of the other and reaching for some place beyond the stars with our curiosity, imagination, ingenuity and resilience. At least I damn sure will be because every step before now has lead me to where I am so why not just keep going and see where I wind up at regardless of successes, failures or perceptions of what the hell is really happening. I am okay with not knowing what the heck is going on as long as I know what is going on in my own mind, my own body, the immediate world around me and especially to the other critters that I will impact and be impacted by.
It is always such a balance of awareness when living in the woods and maintaining that awareness does not accommodate any time for having one's head stuck up their proverbial ass. That is just how it goes because nature does not stop because I am 'having a bad day' or upset about something and if anything in those moments it becomes painfully obvious what is going on and that I need to pay attention and be mindful... after all nature 'has teeth' and knows how to use them and it is only when we cloister ourselves away from nature for long periods of time that we forget that most obvious of things.
Well, I guess that is enough writing for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
There have been some very pretty days like this one!
My boy dog basking in the warmth of the sun.
Bob the rooster was looking rough after fighting with his brother.
The tree that I got hung when felling it.
The swank cordless chainsaw that I now have to use!
The bar and chain part numbers for anyone wanting to upgrade their cordless chainsaw.
A new table that I built for in the tent!
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That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/apocalyptic-homesteading-day-80-91
